Diversity of coconut accessions for fruit components
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Date
2005
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Abstract
Using Mahalanobis generalized distance, 70 accessions of field conserved coconut germplasm maintained at Central Plantation Crops Research Institute, Kasaragod were classified for fruit characteristics. In the dendrogram showing hierarchical clustering, 4 the largest group consisted of 47 accessions. Amalgamation of clusters in this group was at shorter distance. Classification of the accessions into distinct groups was also attempted. The pattern of amalgamation observed in the dendrogram was taken as the guideline for deciding the cut-off points in the partition method which resulted in twenty seven clusters. The cluster size varied between 1 to 7: there were two clusters each of sizes 7 and 5; five clusters of size 4; eight clusters of size 2 and the remaining 12 were singletons. It was noticed that the popular cultivars known across the world (West ~ o a s Tta ll, Tiptur Tall (both from India), West African Tall, Philippines Ordinary Tall and Sri Lanka Tall) have many fruit characters in common. In other words, in most of the coconut growing countries, the cultivators considered the fruit type of these cultivars as the ideal. The three dwarfs of Malaysian origin appeared in the same cluster. However, the dwarfs did not exclusively form a cluster, except for the one consisting of Surinam Brown Dwarf and Chowghat Green Dwarf. The accessions that are distinct apart are all of Tall type. The accessions from the Pacific Ocean and South-East Asian regions were spread throughout the dendrogram, confirming bat these regions offered maximum variability. The indigenous collections also exhibited enormous variability. The correlation among the fruit characters was attributed to three causative factors, the first one related to weight measurements, second is for nut-constituents and third for the husk. The important characters that cause divergence as obtained from the canonical analysis were, weight of fruit, length of fruit, volume of cavity, weight of shell and per cent husk to fruit weight.
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Keywords
Coconut accessions, fruit component analysis, biodiversity
Citation
Journal of Plantation Crops, 2005, 33 (1) : 1-8